Annotide vs Encord
Encord positions itself as a data platform for regulated and multimodal AI work — video, medical imaging (DICOM), 3D/LiDAR — with SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR certifications, aimed at teams in healthcare, autonomous vehicles and other compliance-heavy industries. This page compares it to Annotide directly.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| Annotide | Encord | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Source-available, Elastic License 2.0; a key adds users and Business features | Proprietary, closed source |
| Deployment | Self-hosted only, on your own cloud or servers | Hosted SaaS by default; VPC and on-prem deployment at Enterprise tier |
| Where media lives | Your own storage, always | Encord’s cloud by default; “Private Cloud Integration” keeps data in your own storage while Encord’s hosted app orchestrates it |
| Pricing | Per seat, published: free up to 3 users; Team €12/user/month (or €29/month for 5 plus €12 per extra user); Business €20/user/month | Starter / Team / Enterprise — no published list prices, quote-based |
| SSO | OIDC and SAML 2.0, in Business (€20/user/month, self-serve, 30-day trial) | Enterprise tier only, alongside multi-workspace and VPC/on-prem |
| Model-assisted labelling | Bring-your-own model gateway, interactive segmentation, active learning, retraining webhook; optional bundled SAM 2.1 image for click-to-polygon segmentation, on CPU | Model-assisted labelling, model evaluation, data agents |
| Media types | Image, video, audio, text (NER/relations), PDF, time series, LLM evaluation, multimodal | Image, video, DICOM/medical imaging, 3D/LiDAR, documents |
| Certifications | — | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR |
Where media lives
Section titled “Where media lives”Encord’s default mode is hosted SaaS: data is uploaded to Encord’s cloud. For customers who need data to stay in their own storage, Encord offers “Private Cloud Integration,” where Encord’s platform requests temporary signed URLs against your own cloud storage instead of storing the data itself — directionally similar to Annotide’s approach to storage, though the Encord application itself remains hosted by Encord unless you’re on their Enterprise VPC/on-premises tier. Annotide has only the self-hosted shape: the application, the database and the storage connector all run inside your own infrastructure from the start, with no separate hosted mode to opt out of.
Pricing shape
Section titled “Pricing shape”Encord doesn’t publish per-seat or per-project prices for any of its three tiers (Starter, Team, Enterprise); Starter and Team go through a “get-started” form and Enterprise through sales. That makes it hard to budget for before a sales conversation. Annotide publishes its full price list: Community free for up to three users, Team €12/user/month (or €29/month for a team of 5 plus €12 per extra user), Business €20/user/month with SSO, SCIM and quality control, Enterprise at €18/user/month billed yearly, from €3,000/year, for annual invoicing, volume pricing, offline keys and custom contract terms, with support plans (€150–€1,500/month) sold separately from the software licence.
Licensing
Section titled “Licensing”Encord is closed-source, proprietary SaaS — there’s no self-hostable open-source core to evaluate independently of a sales process. Annotide’s source is available to read and modify under the Elastic License 2.0: free to run, commercially too, with a key for more than three users or the Business features.
When to choose Encord instead
Section titled “When to choose Encord instead”- You work with DICOM medical imaging or 3D/LiDAR data, where Encord has purpose-built tooling that Annotide does not.
- You need SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA or GDPR certifications attached to the vendor itself, rather than relying on your own infrastructure’s compliance posture.
- You want a hosted platform with data agents and model evaluation features aimed at teams running several AI applications at once, and you’re comfortable with quote-based pricing instead of a published list.
When Annotide fits better
Section titled “When Annotide fits better”- You want published, flat per-seat pricing instead of a quote-only Starter/Team/Enterprise ladder.
- You want SSO at a published per-seat price with a free trial, not reserved for Enterprise alongside VPC/on-prem.
- Your compliance posture depends on media never leaving your own cloud account by default — not as an Enterprise-tier integration mode, but as the only mode the product has.
- You want LLM evaluation and text annotation in the same product as image/video, rather than a platform centered on vision and medical imaging.